“I’ve been working on this story for months. I brought this to the first class, not you. These are my re-writes.”
Nancy looked from person to person. Audrey and Fran looked embarrassed and with good reason, she thought. James had blatantly stolen her work. Lois’s expression was inscrutable. Probably she was trying to distance herself from an uncomfortable situation.
“Are you crazy? My characters were named Simon and Juliet, and you’ve called yours Seth and Julia, but other than that, it’s the SAME EXACT STORY. How could you do that? It’s… well, it’s crazy!” she was outraged, and felt the pitch of her voice creeping upward into hysteria.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Don’t you remember the first week when I brought in The Cat’s Out of the Bag? It was a little rougher then, but I believe I’ve edited it down nicely, don’t you agree, Lois?” James asked.
Well, this will settle it, Nancy thought. She was glad he’d appealed to Lois, who would surely find some graceful way to set him straight.
Lois looked right into Nancy’s eyes and said, “Nancy, I’m not sure what you’re trying to say, here. I absolutely remember James sharing that story in the first class. I remember I was impressed by his dialogue and pacing.”
“HIS dialogue and pacing? It was MY dialogue and pacing! Audrey, you remember, don’t you?” Nancy turned to the gentle older woman on her right, who looked like she wanted to crawl out of the room.
“Ummm, I remember the story,” Audrey said quietly, her normally pale face bright red.
“And you remember that I wrote it, right? You said you liked the part about the dumpster!”
“I remember saying that, yes.” she hesitated. “But I don’t remember who I said it to…”
“Oh, my God!” Nancy said. “I can’t believe this is happening. Fran, don’t you remember it?”
“I’m staying out of this,” was all Fran would say.
“Look,” Lois said. “It’s late. We have one more class left. Let’s call it a night and meet back here next week for our final session. Nancy, I know you’ve had a crazy week. You must be tired, and maybe you’re not thinking clearly.”
“I am totally thinking clearly, and what I’m thinking is that you people are nuts! I’ll prove to you that I wrote that story. I’ll bring it in next week, and you’ll see that I wrote it first!” and she stormed out of the classroom, out of PS 135 and into the warm May evening. She stalked homeward, muttering to herself the entire way.
Arriving at her apartment, she powered on her computer. While she waited for it to boot up, she dug through her writing folder, looking for the four copies of The Cat’s Pajamas she’d brought to the first class.
“Crap!” she exclaimed aloud to her empty apartment as she realized she had torn up and thrown away the copies after she’d made the suggested edits to her manuscript. Once Windows was started up she clicked on the desktop icon for Word. The Cat’s Pajamas was no longer listed in the Recently Viewed documents, which made sense since she hadn’t opened it for weeks. Once the final edits had been made, there was no need to.
She navigated through My Documents and located the file, checking the Modified Date.
“Crap!” Nancy said again. The Modified Date was, of course, from four weeks ago, when she’d made her edits. That would prove nothing. She right-clicked on the filename and selected Properties, which she knew would contain the Created Date.
“Crap, Crap, Crap!” She remembered with horror that the week after that fateful first class, she’d zipped up and emailed herself everything from her My Documents folder, including the Word document containing The Cat’s Pajamas. She had then reformatted her hard drive to rid herself of a nasty virus. The Create Date on the file appeared as March 21, a week AFTER the first class. It would prove nothing.
Nancy desperately wanted someone with whom she could share this incredible story. She and her husband Mitch had divorced a year ago, right after their youngest son Travis had left for UVM. They’d managed to hold the marriage together while the kids were still at home, but was they were gone, there didn’t seem to be any point. He was now living in Croton Falls with his new, or possibly not so new, girlfriend.
She tried to reach Travis and Marlee, but calls to both children went to voicemail. No doubt they’d think the whole thing was silly anyway. Nancy poured herself a generous glass of Chardonnay and sat down with her remote control in front of CSI, making a concerted effort to calm down.
The following Thursday, she printed out and brought to class four copies of The Cat’s Pajamas.
When Audrey and Fran had finished reading, Nancy noticed that they looked everywhere in the room except at her. No one had written anything on their copy of the manuscript. The room seemed quieter than usual. James had excused himself and gone to the restroom.
“Well,” Lois said, looking up. “It appears that Nancy is still having a problem with James’s story from last week.”
“Yeah, I’m having a problem,” she admitted. “I’m having a problem because James stole my story!” Nancy wondered if she was slurring her words just a little. She’d had one or two glasses of wine before class started, to keep her courage up.
“This is clearly a thinly masked copy of James’s story,” Lois began.
Nancy jumped to her feet and protested, “No, it ISN’T!” slamming her fist on the table.
“Now, Nancy, my goodness! If you don’t calm down, I’m going to have to ask you to leave!”
“You don’t have to ask me to leave,” she said, “because I’m not going to stay here another minute and listen to this. I don’t know what your racket is, but that was my story, and he ripped it off, and for some reason you’re backing him up. That’s the truth!” Nancy grabbed her umbrella and her purse and slammed out the door, leaving behind her copies of the manuscript.
She met James in the hall outside the classroom and poked him in the chest with her finger.
“You. Rotten. Thief.” was all she said.
Nancy wrote nothing for a few months. She started dating Frank, a nice guy from the Finance department at her office who claimed he’d had his eye on her for a while.
Eventually, she got back to writing. She wrote one story, called In a Nutshell, that Frank insisted was so good she should send it to a writing competition. Fiction Digest was accepting entries for their Fall contest. First prize was $1,000 and the entry fee was only $15.
“What the heck?” Nancy said to Frank. “What have I got to lose?”
“Only $15!” he said. “But you won’t lose!”
Frank was right, she didn’t lose. But she didn’t win either. She came in third. The winning story was entitled, The Cat’s Out of the Bag, by James Philip VanHorne. In his brief bio, the author had given special thanks to Lois Withnail, his editor and his inspiration.
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